Gail Martin - The Sworn

Those barrows had been thought to be so dangerous that the nomadic Sworn patrolled them, making their circuit from the Northern Sea on Margolan’s far border down across Dhasson to Nargi. Tris had not met the Sworn, but as he dismounted from his horse and approached the desecrated barrow, arranging a meeting with one of their warriors suddenly jumped to the top of his list of things to do.

Tris’s mage sense prickled a warning the closer he got to the barrow. He heard nothing unusual with his ears, but on another level, it seemed as if voices whispered just beyond hearing range. He did not need to recognize their words to sense the malevolence.

“I need you and the men to step back,” Tris said to Soterius. “Protect Esme.”

“We’re here to keep you in one piece,” Soterius said levelly, meeting Tris’s gaze.

“I appreciate that. But if a dimonn ’s what we’re really up against, it won’t care about swords. Magic’s the only thing that can turn it.”

“We’ve vowed our lives to keep you safe.”

“Then honor that vow by stepping back. If I’m distracted by worrying about protecting you, I’m that much more likely to make a fatal mistake.”

Soterius yielded, but his dislike for the order was clear in his face. “Fall back!”

When the soldiers had stepped back a dozen paces, Tris joined Fallon in walking a circle around the barrow, using his drawn sword as an athame as they raised wardings for protection. Or, more precisely, to protect the soldiers and anyone on the other side of the warding from what was inside it with him and the two mages. When they finished, Tris kept his sword in hand, although he knew it was unlikely to deter whatever dwelled within the barrow.

“Look here.” Fallon bent over a pile of rubble. Beyral knelt next to the stones, and Tris could see that her hands were working in the complex motions of a spell.

Beyral’s magic made the runes on the broken pieces of stone glow. “Someone set sigils of protection over the entrance to the barrow,” Fallon said quietly. “These are old-very old.”

“The Sworn?”

Fallon frowned. “I don’t think so. I’ve come across the barrows they patrol on occasion and their magic feels completely different. No, I don’t think this is one of theirs.”

“Can we seal it back up and put protections back into place?”

Fallon and Beyral exchanged glances. “If it were the two of us alone, I’d say no. Whoever did this the first time was a powerful mage. But your magic is stronger-and you’re a summoner. I really don’t want to think about anything you can’t bottle up.”

“Let’s get started,” Tris said, with an anxious eye toward the sky. Although late-summer afternoons seemed to last forever, Tris knew that strong magic required time, and he would prefer to finish the working long before the sun began to set.

Tris had just lifted the first of the sigil stones into his hands when he felt a rush of frigid air. A black shadow spread from the gaping hole in the barrow’s side, growing like a bloodstain.

Beyral began to chant, while Fallon and Tris stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the shadow’s way. Tris had given Evan’s talisman to Fallon, and its protection gave her more freedom to move.

“ Lethyrashem!” Fallon spoke the banishment spell as Tris gathered his power for the first salvo. The dimonn fell back momentarily, and then surged forward once more. Magic arced between Tris’s hands and a blinding flare of light streaked toward the growing shadow. The thing shrieked, and the odor of burned, rotted meat filled the air.

The dimonn twisted, evading the worst of the blast, and this time it was Beyral who sent a curtain of flame, cutting off the dimonn as it lunged for Fallon. Tris anticipated its next move, and his sword-athame drew an opalescent scrim between himself and the dimonn.

“We can’t contain it forever-any great ideas?” Tris shouted.

“If you can get it to back down, Beyral and I can seal the opening with runes,” Fallon replied.

What are you? Tris stretched out his magic toward the shadow.

I am hunger. The dimonn ’s voice sounded like a hundred screams in Tris’s mind.

Who loosed you?

Those who would be my master.

Why have you come?

To consume everything.

“Wrong answer,” Tris said between gritted teeth. To make the next magic work, he would have to drop his shielding. That would make it a contest to see whether he could be faster than the dimonn.

In one breath, Tris dropped the coruscating power that shielded him from the dimonn. It rushed toward him, and the dimonn slashed at him, and one clawed arm sliced through the chain mail that protected Tris’s arm and shoulder. He could feel the dimonn ’s hunger for blood, for life, for power. The fresh blood drove the dimonn into a frenzy. Tris fought vertigo as he ignored the pain, and he saw his opportunity. Tris met the dimonn with the full brunt of his power, drawing on the magic of the Flow, his own life force, and on the fire within that pumped the bright red blood from his wounds. Everything else seemed to dim as Tris poured his power into forcing the dimonn back into the darkness of the barrow. Distantly, he could hear Fallon’s spellcasting and Beyral’s chanting, and beyond the wardings, the shouts of his soldiers.

Tris shut it all out, everything except the screeching wail of the dimonn as his power forced it backward. He could feel the old magic of the barrow, the sundered charms, and the broken spells. The old power buoyed him, feeding back into his magic.

“Ready, Tris!” Fallon shouted.

Tris charged forward with a cry, and a wave of power roiled up around him, rising from the barrow itself. The dimonn clawed at the sod, its talons gouging into the dirt as the magic forced it back from the edge of daylight into the darkness of the tomb. Beyral and Fallon ran past Tris, each carrying part of the stone lintel that had once capped the barrow entrance. They pushed the broken stone into the hole that had been dug into the mound, and their chants raised the dark runes on the stonework into fiery lettering. The dimonn gave one last shriek from the depths of the mound, and Fallon and Beyral brought down the rest of the marked stones, burying the talisman Evan had found in the center of the stone sigils.

Warily, Tris let the power flow out of him and gasped as the pain of the gashes on his shoulder fully registered. He did not drop the outer warding until he had helped Beyral and Fallon completely seal the barrow entrance. Together, they stood and made one last working over the mound, incorporating magic to deter any who might think to repeat the desecration.

“You’re hurt.” Fallon looked at Tris with alarm, and her gaze followed the bloody trail from his shoulder to his ribs.

“I’ve felt better,” Tris said, shaking from the expenditure of power. Magic usually left him with a headache, and the severity of the pain depended on the difficulty of the working. A reaction headache was already beginning to pound behind his temples, but he guessed that the fever he felt had more to do with the dimonn ’s poison.

Tris eased himself to the ground. Esme ran to him and began to tend his shoulder as the guards formed a protective ring around them.

“Dammit, Tris! You should have let us in to help,” Soterius swore, giving the injury a worried glance.

“It went through the chain mail. The only reason it didn’t take my arm was because my magic was holding it back,” Tris said tiredly. “Your soldiers wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Can you heal him?” Soterius said, looking to Esme.

Esme nodded. “Yes, but it’s going to hurt like hell.” She glanced at Fallon and Beyral. “I’ll help them once I get Tris patched up.”